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Anti-tobacco lawyers want smoker-free U.S. jury

By Michael Connor

MIAMI, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Anti-tobacco lawyers want the judge in Florida's $500 billion class-action lawsuit against cigarette makers to ban smokers from the jury that will decide the landmark case, a court official said on Thursday.

If granted, the ban would further delay the start of testimony in the pioneering case by extending jury selection, now ending its 10th week.

Lawyers have so far screened about 1,000 people in Engle et al vs RJ Reynolds et al and have tentatively settled on 84 of the 96 people needed for a jury pool, the spokesman said.

Six jurors to decide the case on behalf of an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 sick smokers in Florida, as well as six to 12 alternates, will be eventually selected from the jury pool.

But husband-and-wife lawyers Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt have told trial Judge Robert Kaye of Miami-Dade County Circuit Court that they want 22 people, including all smokers, pulled from the pool now.

Neither Rosenblatt was immediately available to comment, but they have complained that jury picking has been slowed by widely held beliefs that any claimant with lung cancer, emphysema or other tobacco-related disease chose to smoke and was largely responsible for his or her plight.

Anyone holding such beliefs cannot fairly weigh claims that cigarette companies hid the dangers of smoking, the Rosenblatts have said.

Tobacco company lawyers have also registered objections to members of the jury pool, the official said. A spokeswoman for the tobacco lawyers was not immediately available to comment.

The tobacco lawyers have already won the right to eliminate from the jury pool anyone related to a person with a tobacco-related ailment anywhere in the United States, the official said.

The suit seeks $500 billion or more in damages from U.S. cigarette makers, according to court papers. Engle et al claims that all of Florida's sick smokers were misled by cigarette companies hiding the dangers of smoking while selling hazardous products.

Tobacco company lawyers deny the charges and have said they will argue during the trial that the plaintiffs chose to smoke and were responsible for any tobacco-related illnesses.

Hopes among lawyers that testimony might begin next week in the case were dimming, according to the court official, who described the jury selection as the longest in memory in a local court.

The case, the first class-action suit on behalf of smokers to come to trial, was filed in 1994 by the Rosenblatts, who last year secured a $350 million settlement with tobacco companies on behalf of non-smoking airline flight attendants.

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